David Wallace - Oblivion

Ellen Bactrian said: ‘But is there actual suffering involved?’ She was already constructing a mental flow chart of calls to be made and arrangements undertaken and then dividing the overall list between herself and Laurel Manderley, whom she now considered a bit of a pistol.

‘Well, listen — can he take orders?’

‘Skip? Skip’s a consummate pro.’

The executive intern was adjusting the balloon sleeves of her blouse. ‘And according to him, the miraculous poo man is skittish on the story?’

‘The word Laurel says Skip used was excruciated.’

‘Is that even a word?’

‘It’s apparently totally the wife’s show, in terms of publicity. The artist guy is scared of his own shadow — according to Laurel, he’s sitting there flashing Skip secret signs like No, please God, no.’

‘So how hard could it be to represent this to Atwater’s All Ads person as comprising bona fide suffering?’

Ellen Bactrian’s mental flow charts often contained actual boxes, Roman numerals, and multiarrow graphics — that’s how gifted an administrator she was. ‘You’re talking about something live, then.’

‘With the proviso that of course it’s all academic until this afternoon’s tests check out.’

‘But do we know for sure he’ll even go for it?’

The executive intern never brushed her hair after a shower. She just gave her head two or three shakes and let it fall gloriously where it might and turned, slightly, to give Ellen Bactrian the full effect:

‘Who?’ She had ten weeks to live.

6.

In what everyone at the next day’s working lunch would agree was a masterstroke, the special limousine that arrived at 5:00 AM Wednesday to convey the artist and his wife to Chicago was like something out of a Style reader’s dream. Half a city block long, white the way cruise ships and bridal gowns are white, it had a television and wet bar, opposing seats of cordovan leather, noiseless AC, and a thick glass shield between passenger compartment and driver that could be raised and lowered at the touch of a button on the woodgrain panel, for privacy. To Skip Atwater, it looked like the hearse of the kind of star for whom the whole world stops dead in its tracks to mourn. Inside, the Moltkes faced each other, their knees almost touching, the artist’s hands obscured from view by the panels of his new beige sportcoat.

The salaryman’s Kia trailing at a respectful distance, the limousine proceeded at dawn through the stolid caucasian poverty of Mount Carmel. There were only faint suggestions of faces behind its windows’ darkened glass, but whoever was awake to see the limousine glide by could tell that whoever was in there looking out saw everything afresh, like coming out of a long coma.

O Verily was, understandably, a madhouse. The time from initial pitch to live broadcast was 31 hours. The Suffering Channel would enter stage three at 8:00 PM CDT on 4 July, ten weeks ahead of schedule, with three tableaux vivant. There were five different line producers, and all of them were very busy indeed.

It was not Sweeps Week; but as the saying goes in cable, every week is Sweeps Week.

A 52 year old grandmother from Round Lake Beach IL had a growth in her pancreas. The needle biopsy w/ CAT assist at Rush Presbyterian would be captured live by a remote crew; so would the activities of the radiology MD and pathologist whose job was to stain the sample and determine whether the growth was malignant. The segment entailed two separate freelance crews, all of whom were IA union and on holiday double time. The second part of the feed would be split screen. In something of a permissions coup, they’d have the woman’s face for the whole ten minutes it took for the stain to set and the pathologist to scope it. She and her husband would be looking at a monitor on which the pathology crew’s real time feed would be displayed — viewers would get to see the verdict and her reaction to it at the same time.

Finding just the right host for the segments’ intros and voiceovers was an immense headache, given that nearly every plausible candidate’s agent was off for the Fourth, and that whomever The Suffering Channel cast they were then all but bound to stick with for at least one stage three cycle. Finalists were still being auditioned as late as 3:00 PM — and Style magazine’s Skip Atwater, in a move whose judgment was later questioned all up and down the editorial line, ended up devoting a good part of his time, attention, and shorthand notes to these auditions, as well as to a lengthy and somewhat meandering Q&A with an assistant to the Reudenthal and Voss associate tasked to the day’s multiform permissions and releases.

In 1996, an unemployed arc welder was convicted of abducting and torturing to death a Penn State coed named Carole Ann Deutsch. Over four hours of high quality audiotape had been recovered from the suspect’s apartment and entered into evidence at trial. Voiceprint analysis confirmed that the screams and pleadings on the tapes — which were played for the jury, though not in open court — belonged to the victim. This tableau’s venue was a hastily converted OVP conference room. For the first time, Carole Ann Deutsch’s widowed father, of Glassport PA, would listen to selections from those tapes. There with him for support are the associate pastor from Mr. Deutsch’s church and an APA certified trauma counselor whose sunburn, only hours old, presents some ticklish problems for the segment’s makeup coordinator.

Longtime People’s Court moderator Doug Llewellyn hosts. After lengthy and sometimes heated negotiations — during which at one point Mrs. Anger herself had to be contacted at home and enjoined to speak directly by cell to R. Vaughn Corliss, which Ellen Bactrian later said made her just about want to curl up and die — representatives of both the ACLU and the League of Decency are on hand for brief interviews by Skip Atwater of Style.

It is a clear Lucite commode unit atop a ten foot platform of tempered glass beneath which a video crew will record the real time emergence of either an iconically billowing and ecstatic Monroe or a five to seven inch Winged Victory of Samothrace, depending on dramatic last minute instructions. Suspended from the studio’s lighting grid to a position directly before the commode unit, a special monitor taking feed from below will give the artist visual access to his own production for the first time ever in his career. He believes what he sees will be public.

In point of fact, the piece’s physical emergence will not really be broadcast. The combined arguments of Style’ s Ellen Bactrian and the Development heads of O Verily Productions finally persuaded Mr. Corliss it would be beyond the pale. Instead, the artist’s wife has been interviewed on tape respecting Brint Moltke’s abusive childhood and the terrific shame, ambivalence, and sheer human suffering involved in his unchosen art. Edited portions of this interview will compose the voiceover as TSC viewers watch the artist’s face in the act of creation, its every wince and grimace captured by the special camera hidden within the chassis of the commode’s monitor.

A consciência é o pesadelo da natureza.

It is, of course, malignant. Subsequently, though, Carole Ann Deutsch’s father discomfits everyone by seeming less interested in the tapes than in justifying his appearance on the broadcast itself. His purpose for being here is to inform the public of what victims’ loved ones go through, to humanize the process and raise awareness. He repeats this several times, but at no point does he share how he feels or what he feels he’s gone through just now, listening. In the context of what he and the viewers have just heard, Mr. Deutsch’s reaction comes off as almost obscenely abstract and disengaged. On the other hand, Doug Llewellyn’s own evident humanity and ad lib skill in getting everyone through the segment testify to the soundness of his casting.